Sunday, 23 August 2009

In the comments section of a blogpost by SUZY ALL-CAPS thanking gord for the new regulations that threatened abortions in private clinics in Quebec (regulations swiftly backed away from by non-politically suicidal pols), I was arguing with HER about the impact one such closure.

Sure it will. It will make waiting times longer. I said so in my blog.

Longer waits mean more time to decide to carry to term. They already said in the Devoir article that the wait times are getting longer.

I argued that longer wait times just mean more later-term abortion, more stress, more cost, yadayada. SHE replied that fetus fetishists support mandatory wait times because more women decide not to abort. I asked for proof.

An analysis by Rachel Benston Gold for the Guttmacher Institute, published earlier this year, concluded that measures aimed at dissuading women from having abortions "do not appear to be effective in ... materially reducing the number of procedures performed."

She cited a review of studies by Guttmacher, Ibis Reproductive Health and Baruch College which found that such measures "by and large ... do not prevent abortions." This review called the strategy "largely unsuccessful."

One "clear exception," they concluded, was disadvantaged women, who "often don't have the resources to navigate the hurdles" imposed by such restrictions.

Parental involvement laws "do little to affect the abortion rate," this trio concluded, with one possible exception: Such laws may have contributed to an increase in the teen birth rate in Texas where teens were not able to travel the distances required to access out-of-state services.

Waiting periods, similarly, have kept some disadvantaged women from accessing abortion because the two-visit requirement has proven insurmountable to some, but have not been much of a problem for higher-income women.

Pointing to data showing that "almost all women obtaining abortions are sure of their decision ... before they have even picked up the phone to make an appointment," Gold argues it's not likely women will be swayed by "inaccurate and emotionally laden attempts to persuade them otherwise."